Does More Posts = More Traffic?
Yesterday in a post discussing the popularity of list-style posts in blogging, a commenter asked me to look at the frequency of post types in relation to the traffic they bring. Following this comment I put together some statistics and ended up wondering a slightly different question, does having more blog posts mean you end up with more traffic?
In the previous post I pulled up some statistics from Google Analytics to reveal that on our AppStorm blogs we had the following distribution of traffic to our different post types:
- Roundups: 843,024 Pageviews in July
- Reviews: 126,161 Pageviews in July
- How-To: 95,905 Pageviews in July
Following on from Martin Ansty’s question in the comments, I checked and we have published the following quantities of posts:
- 288 Roundups
- 339 Reviews
- 159 How-to Posts
Doing the Math
So in other words, not only are list-style Roundups generating way more traffic, there are less of them. If you combine the results:
- Average Review nets 370 pageviews p/month
- Average How-to Post nets 600 pageviews p/month
- Average Roundup nets 2900 pageviews p/month
So by this math, if we can add, say, another 300 Roundups to AppStorm in the next year then this time next year we’d have added 300×3000 pageviews p/month = 900,000 pageviews p/month! 300 Roundups over 3 app review blogs over a year means just 2 a week – that seems very achievable, and adding 900,000 pageviews would be a 60% traffic increase!
Does this really work?
Of course whether adding more posts really brings new people seems very debatable. After all it seems equally possible that the same traffic just gets spread over an increasingly large pool of blog posts.
So what I did was to go back in time to get some historical data from December 2009 which is about 8 months ago. At that time on just the Mac Apps blog there were 57 Roundup posts, and that month they netted 161,000 pageviews. In other words each Roundup post brought in 2850 pageviews on average. That is almost EXACTLY the same traffic to post ratio! So this observation sounds very promising for our hypothesis!
Taking this logic to the extreme
So let’s take this logic all the way to see if it really does hold up. Imagine instead of publishing 300 Roundups over the next year, we published 300,000 Roundups! Forget about the impossibility of such a feat, and let’s just focus on the numbers here.
By my previous logic, every one of those Roundups should bring in about 3,000 pageviews. So by publishing the huge number of additional posts, we should end up with a whopping 900,000,000 pageviews a month!
To give that number some context, according to Google’s list of the top 1000 Sites in the world, this would place AppStorm in the top 20, and make it easily the largest blog in the world.
This doesn’t really seem very realistic as it completely ignores the fact that there is a finite limit to how many people are interested in reading about apps!
So surely at some point adding more posts does NOT equal more traffic.
This makes intuitive sense, and when I think about another blog of ours, FreelanceSwitch, it also makes empirical sense. While AppStorm is a fast growing site, FreelanceSwitch has remained very steady for a couple of years now. Is that because we stopped posting? Nope! In the last two years we’ve added hundreds more posts to the site, so by my earlier math we should have grown our traffic by a huge amount – which we haven’t.
So clearly in AppStorm’s case the post to traffic ratio is only holding because the traffic happens to be growing on the site at the moment, and it hasn’t reached its full potential yet.
Increasing Frequency
Another question is in regard to frequency of posts. Sites like Lifehacker, Mashable and TechCrunch all post many, many times a day. I’ve definitely read in places (that I can’t remember now) that one of the biggest reasons they post more frequently is because it means more traffic.
An increased frequency of posts definitely equates to more traffic if the same number of readers end up reading more posts. It also makes sense that there would be some benefit to having that much more content on the site, simply from the point of view of search traffic, chance of being linked to and chance of hitting a topic or post that goes viral or popular.
Conclusions
So to sum up my little bit of quick and dirty analysis, I would say that more posts, particularly more concurrent posts, does have a relationship to traffic. However I would not believe that it’s a linear relationship, at least not for any serious length of time because there are definite ceilings to how many people are interested in a particular topic.
As for AppStorm I do have a feeling that we’re going to have to increase the post frequency on our blogs to put all these hypothesis to the test soon!
Building a Successful Blog
If you enjoyed this article, then you can read more about AppStorm in the case studies section of my new book: How to Build a Successful Blog Business! It comes with two other case studies and a lot of how-to material based on how we have built our successful blogs here at Envato.
All I have to say is : It’s About Quality Not Quantity.
Quality is important but who will you be giving the quality posts to if you don’t bring in traffic? I think traffic is as important. Otherwise, we’ll all just be wasting our time.
I wish that were true. But in my experience it does seem that you need to start by really inserting yourself in the search engines with a large quantity of posts. I think that as soon as you get some popularity and regular readers coming in to your website, the quality argument holds true. But at first you really need to post a lot to get that initial draw of traffic.
I’ve always wondered about the magic number between frequency of posts vs. new traffic.
Sometimes the problem with higher posting frequency is the posts can turn into fluff pieces with minimal content; which will definitely annoy regular users.
I guess you just have to make sure you keep your quality up with your increase your quantity. Unfortunately, we always hear that you can only choose one between quality and quantity…
I’m interested to see what the numbers reveal
Hey Collis,
Thanks for this write-up. It’s helped to explain a lot about traffic and how it relates to the folk running the site and how they could use it to plan for the future and leverage the results for certain outcomes.
I’ll be getting your book shortly – any chance of getting a printed one autographed? *grin*
Great read! I was always curious about this… it’s definitely something to look into more.
As long it’s quality traffic and it converts…let’s keep on writing
For sites that rely simply on ad revenue, quality traffic doesn’t really matter.
MORE POST = MORE TRAFFIC ==> MORE Quality Post = MORE RETURNING TRAFFIC…
That I believe…!
It’s tough science, in my opinion, to effectively determine how post frequency and regularity relates to traffic. A better metric for targeting an increase of traffic is post quality.
Sure, you could post 300,000 bland posts in a year to increase your traffic to that of a world-class blog. Or you could post 100 quality, helpful, and original articles in a year and watch your traffic sky rocket. Right?
Yes, I agreed with you Tanner. The more good we post a content then more traffic we got.
Another great post
More posts surely means more traffic. But the relationship is not linear as Collis pointed out.
Both the quantity and quality of the posts are of vital importance. Quality surely precedes quantity as the quality traffic will be directly proportional to the quality posts.
If the blog is updated daily the people will atleast visit the blog to check for the topic of the day and if it happens to be a quality post then you get targeted quality traffic.
Most importantly, what this all comes down to is quality content. Out of 300 posts, whats not to say that each one averages a few hundred uniques per day, then BAM! Three of them make it on Digg or Reddit.
I tried it for a bit, creating content more frequently, but often this ends up sacrificing the quality of the content that you are actually outting out there. Sure, the views are there, but are they sold on the content? Not really… And then there is the task of recovering from crud content, and we all know how that can be…
You have to look at it like this: 2 parts quality + 1 part quantity = success. The quality of your work is first and foremost because no one wants to read useless content. BUT, you also need to have a good number of post to increase those visitors IF your looking to get those ratings up. They really work hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other.
I like that equation
When I get to the point that I’m boasting numbers in the 100ks, perhaps this will be something I worry about. For now, I just know that consistency is important, and for the small time blogger using the medium to help establish one’s self in the market, I appreciate any advantage I can get. Thanks for the data
Interesting post with deep analysis. In my case, write round up post is drive more traffic than reviews post. For small blog like my own blog, roundup post drive about 2k-3k page views/month and review post drive about 100-500 page views/mont. It because Google tends to put the round up post at the top than post reviews.
Here’s another consideration: How will the new posts affect the SEO of your site?
It’s sometimes not worth risking the changes that come w/ new posts. For example, if you have a recent posts plugin in the sidebar–a new post effectively changes the SEO configuration of your ENTIRE SITE. Maybe it’s better to register a new domain and start over from scratch–find the next big thing.
Let’s say you have some crazy-popular posts about popcorn that pull big traffic. The SEO planets are in alignment. Life is good. You can now afford that delicious organic popcorn. But then you go and jeopardize your great success by mentioning butter. Uh oh. Poof your site is a graveyard because you lost your high rank somewhere on page 1–your hot popcorn is now cold on page 2.
Unless you’re the inventor of popcorn, very often you’re on the verge in terms of SEO–even if you’re not fighting over a few key phrases. Despite what Matt Cutts says. I can just hear him cracking the content whip. “Just write more high quality content! More, more!”
“Uhh, sorry you’re on page 2, that’s very strange–let’s take a look at your code. Uh oh. That explains it–your page has an outlandish Unicode apostrophe that made us think your content was scraped. Our engineers will counterbalance this ASAP as Rank-Factor #942, just for you!”
Even if you’re the inventor of popcorn, who really cares? Besides you. Maybe a big crate of Namebrand popcorn arrives on Google’s doorstep, metaphorically speaking of course.
I bet you even big blogs like TC have one or two posts that make a massive slice of revenue–risking those pages falling off page 1 is seriously life changing. No more fancy popcorn, buddy. I know this from experience.
That’s the nature of this biz. Lots of change, every day. And it’s not easy to diversify when so much expertise is needed to maintain this or that web server, PHP script, database query, CSS theme, security update, etc. Even if you wanted to start another biz–you’re going to need a computer nearby in case something goes wrong–don’t get me started.
Not a steady paycheck. No pension, no health benefits, and you get to pay double income tax if you live in the US.
Collis, when a blog reaches that ceiling you mentioned, do you think is better to add new related topics to attract more traffic or just forget about the traffic and focus on selling products to the audience you already have?
I have the same question, although I feel building and selling should go hand in hand.
Really good article.
It´s really good when we can see the numbers.
Keep on the nice work
Collis – I really think it’s a case of giving your readers whatever they expect from you and your blog.
Some bloggers get away with RSS subscribership growth per month in the thousands relative to their size with 1 post per week. Other blogs need to post 50 stories per day in order to have the same percentage growth. Readers of Mashable are so accustomed to multiple posts per day that they now expect this of the site and the editors.
Perhaps as a counter premise, it would be good to show an example of a Technorati Top 100 Blog that posts one article per day or less. I’m sure I’ve seen this sort of analysis done before – can anyone point me in the right direction?
I started a website about 2 years ago and have posted about 2-3x a month. The traffic is ok. I don’t expect a ton of traffic with a posting schedule like that.
I started up another blog at the end of June and post at least 1x a day and have been getting some decent traffic. The spiders seem to come more often and my keyword rank keeps climbing. None of the posts are long as most are short or simply video.
Great post – this is actually really interesting. I would love to see these numbers calculated for a larger group of blogs to see if this is a general trend. I agree that there is not a linear relation between post and traffic; it’s probably more like an s-curve which is common for growth-scenarios with an upper limit: http://image.wistatutor.com/content/plant-growth-movements/growth-curve.jpeg
Yes, adding more posts definitely drives more new visitors through long-tail search terms. We’ve also proved this theory and added 500 new visitors in just a couple of weeks with 9 new posts.
However, there has to be a leak somewhere, because what’s strange is that our overall traffic is not increasing at the same rate. I suspect while new visitors are going up, returning visitors are either decreasing, or they are not coming back as frequently.
What are you guys doing to address the other half of the issue?
It also matters where traffic comes from – if it is search engines, it takes some time (could be 3 months or more) for a post to become popular, hence drive traffic. Also, posts age and from a moment on the number of pageviews decreases – it could be a steep drop, or a more moderate one. This is why, when you are measuring traffic and you count new posts, they will drive the average down because they are still not propagated on search engines and haven’t reached their full potential. On the other hand, if the posts are news-related, they can become very popular very soon but in a week or less, their pageviews will also drop, which also skews results. What I mean is that the TYPE of the posts matters a lot. If it is mainly a news site, the old posts are hardly getting any traffic but are included in the post count.
hello, well, I think there’s no relationship between post frecuency and traffic, as google says, it’s all about your content, that means, it’s all about the quality of your content… nowadays you can bring tons of quality targeted users with just a few posts, but those post have to be really really great, well researched, well written, etc etc… with promoting and submission work behind them… and in the end, for sure you will get more and more visitors with that equation.
It depends more on the quality.
well, my two cents.
see ya !
Post volume is going to increase traffic if all of those posts are great (or even good). A blog that is maintained by a team of people is going to be able to put out consistently good content because they have the resources. For the blogs run by individuals, I think that the focus should be on quality and not quantity. Most individuals aren’t able to put out good, quality posts in a high volume for a long period of time. When the quality drops, that’s when your traffic is in danger of being hurt.
Setting aside the quality which should be indisputable, I thing that the quantity of the post affects a website in many different ways.
e.g. If you have a blog and you post too much it could end-up chaotic and difficult for users to follow.
On the other hand, if you post every once and a while users will stop visiting you on a daily basis.
I think it’s a similar thing to what applies to twitter: if you tweet every five minutes, I will probably stop following you because you become annoying. If you tweet every five days, I will probably miss most of your tweets.
Sometimes I believe that there must be (?) a “golden number” of posts which of course is different for every website and that the only way to find it is by experimenting on a long term basis (keeping in mind the characteristics of your audience, the competition etc).
Quality is what will keep me coming back for more.
Key: create unique content that will attract more traffic.
Challenge: to make unique articles every single day of the week + promoting it.
I think its more about the quality and range of posts, if you post about the same thing then you’ll get the same people, if you post about a range of different topics, then a range of different people will come, and then maybe read other posts after that.
I think the majority of people who have commented, hit this one on the head. It’s all about the quality of content. However – the more you post, the wider range of content you have on your site giving people more reasons to visit your site, In my opinion that’s what increases traffic.
Collis, thanks for the insight.
I think more blog posts means more traffic in various ways but it shouldn’t be the main focus of bloggers, I should say. Here are some reasons why I say this.
First of all, the more posts one has on his or her blog, the more pages it has in Google’s index. This means there are better chances for one to rank for a search term or another in a particular day. In my experience, I have found that some posts get more search engine traffic on one day but it doesn’t get any at all on another day. So if there are few posts on a blog (like mine
) there are little chances of getting more search traffic.
Mathematically, someone with 100 blog posts who gets 20% of their article pages ranked and clicked through in one day gets more traffic than someone with 10 posts and 20% of article pages clicked through in a single day.
The quality of the blog post also counts. If you’ll agree with me, it’s quality that makes people stay. Post quality can also help with social media traffic. Here’s where the real debate is. Someone with 10 stellar article pieces stands a better chance of getting social media traffic than someone with 100 average articles.
One important thing to remember is that, most social media traffic doesn’t last but it can get you lots of back links and new subscribers. Search engine traffic is almost perpetual if there is always activity on the blog; new comments, new blog posts, etc. It’s a long term strategy. But always, visitors judge a site by the quality of their content so all the traffic won’t be useful unless there’s some real value.
Think about the blogs that run on autopilot. Most rely on search engine traffic and they do fairly well but their general quality is debatable. Most are plastered with ads and there are no opportunities to build relationships.
I think bloggers should work on creating more posts but they should make sure there is some real value in what they are posting. Even if it is just 300 words long.
In my opinion, what leads to more traffic is this:
1. create quality content
2. blog regularly
3. build relationships (on and off your blog)
4. Market your blog (via social media, search engine submission, content marketing, etc.)
All of these 4 elements are essential ways of getting more traffic.
P.S. I am not an expert and I don’t own a popular blog (yet
) . These are based on my personal experience and observations.
Great stuff, both in the article as well as the comments section. Excellent advice for newbies like myself.
Sounds like there is very fine line you must walk in respects to maintaining a balance between sincerity in the distributing of useful information, and at the same time get getting your website notice by posting a lot which is required to get your site notice?
Anyway, I’m here to learns and being so, quite aways from those deep water. Wish you heavy hitters the best of luck in your juggling.
More post for more traffic yes but only dofollow. If your post on non related website, then the traffic you bring will be high bounce rate and low traffic. So remember go for high quality backlink as well for those post and not only for quantities. That why more people go for Press Release or submit article.
From my experience, it seems that the quantity is directly proportional to the number of visits on your site. When my blog had 50 posts I had in average 50 visits daily, and now when I have 500 posts I am having close to 600 visits per day…
ok, so whats going on here?
The old content is gone, the old theme is gone. New theme and new content is up. I take it the netsetter is coming back?
I ask because I would love to get my hands on the old netsetter theme. I know I can buy it from themeforrest but the preview on themeforrest doesnt really look like the netsetter theme.
Have you done any customization to the old theme and how can I get my hands on it?
P.S. Sorry to get all off topic